"What were you and Eva squabbling about?" she asked, looking at Alice.
"Cordelia Burr!" replied Alice, disdainfully.
"Cordelia Burr?"
"Yes. What do you think? Eva wants to take her up and be intimate with her."
"Now, Alice, I don't," cried Eva. "I only wanted to be kinder to her. When Miss Vincent told us that story yesterday, I couldn't help thinking of Cordelia, and that we might be on the wrong track with her, as those horrid girls were with Miss Vincent."
"'Those horrid girls'! What does she mean, Alice?" asked Janey.
Alice repeated Miss Vincent's story. "And Eva," she went on, "has got it into her head that Cordelia is like what Miss Vincent was, and that we are like those horrid girls."
"Not like them; not as bad as they were, yet; but we might be if we kept on, maybe."
"But it isn't the same thing at all, Eva," struck in Janey. "That sweet, pretty Miss Vincent could never have been anything like Cordelia; and we—I'm sure none of us have been like those horrid girls. I don't like Cordelia, but I don't say anything hateful to her, and none of us girls do."
"But you—we don't want her 'round with us, and we show it. We won't dance with her if we can help it, and we've managed to keep her out of things that we were in, a good many times."